Design and implementation choices > Roles of e-assessment in course design

Question 30
To what extent does the timing and frequency of e-assessments during a course affect student learning?

• George Kinnear

There are choices to be made about the timing of e-assessments, particularly when there are multiple assessments taking place throughout a course. What impact do these different choices have on students’ learning?

What motivates this question?

Previous research (Uner & Roediger, 2018) has investigated the impact of placing assessment questions at the end of a chapter versus throughout a chapter (using biology as a context). This informed the design of an online mathematics course making extensive use of e-assessment (Sangwin & Kinnear, in press), where the course materials include e-assessment questions throughout as well as having weekly summative tests.

A related aspect of timing is about feedback - should it be made available to students immediately after an attempt, or after a delay? There is mixed evidence on this point, with some large-scale work underway to investigate (Fyfe et al., 2019). There may be scope for more fine-grained investigation of this question in mathematics assessments specifically, for instance to investigate whether any effect is moderated by the types of questions (from the range typically seen in mathematics assessments).

What might an answer look like?

First, it would be worthwhile to gather examples of different approaches that are used in practice.

Then, experiments could be used to compare different approaches – for instance, comparing the use of shorter more frequent assessments throughout a course, with fewer assessments (e.g. at the end of substantial topics).

Related questions

• This question about timing is a particular aspect of Q27: How can formative e-assessments improve students’ performance in later assessments?
• The answer may depend on the types of question involved, related to Q35: What types of reasoning are required to complete current e-assessments?
• The timing of assessments will be a relevant factor for Q13: How do students interact with an e-assessment system?

References

Fyfe, E., de Leeuw, J. R., Carvalho, P. F., Goldstone, R., & Motz, B. (2019, May 28). ManyClasses 1: Assessing the generalizable effect of immediate versus delayed feedback across many college classes. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/4mvyh

Sangwin, C. J., & Kinnear, G. (in press). Coherently organised digital exercises and expositions. PRIMUS.

Uner, O., & Roediger, H. L. (2018). The Effect of Question Placement on Learning from Textbook Chapters. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 7(1), 116–122. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JARMAC.2017.09.002